ABS 2015 Survey Findings Released

The Australian Bureau of Statistics have released a summary of findings from its Survey on Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC), Australia.

Information about carers is an important component of the SDAC. In the survey, a carer is defined as a person who provides any informal assistance, in terms of help or supervision, to older people (aged 65 years and over) and those with disability. Assistance must be ongoing, or likely to be ongoing, for at least six months. A primary carer is the person who provides the most informal assistance to a person with disability with one or more of the core activities of mobility, self-care and communication. In this survey, primary carer information was collected for people aged 15 years and over.

The information collected provides an insight into many different characteristics of carers and how caring impacts on their lives. In 2015, almost 2.7 million Australians were carers (11.6%), with 856,100 people (3.7%) aged 15 years and over identified as primary carers. These patterns were similar to those in 2009 and 2012.

In 2015:

The average age of a primary carer was 55 years.

Over one-third of primary carers (37.8%) were living with disability themselves.

Females made up the majority of carers, representing 68.1% of primary carers and 55.5% of all carers.

For people aged 15 to 64 years, the labour force participation rate for primary carers (56.3%) and other carers (77.2%) was lower than for non–carers (80.3%).